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Abstract

Governments around the world have displayed lack of urgency to compel universities leaders and managers to improve the way they prepare the human resources bases of their national economies. The purpose of this research is to specifically evaluate the existing leadership styles and management practices in universities in Nigeria using Quality Management models to identify some excellence-related factors associated with success in the models. This investigation adopted a survey research design. The population of the study consists of university lecturers. A questionnaire was used to gather data through purposeful sampling procedure. The data were analyzed using quantitative research procedures. The findings are that higher education institutions in Nigeria need to adopt a holistic approach to the management of transformation that addresses variety of concerns relating to effective leadership and management, staff development structure and systems reform, effective financial management and research and development.

Introduction

University education in Nigeria has been a neglected enterprise. Commissioned reports, academic debates in conferences and research publications on the need for higher education reform from the establishment of higher education in the early 1960s into the late 2015 could not yield any result because of fragmented and piecemeal action by the National University Commission (NUC) and government. Influential fact finding reports and research publications are scarcely cross-referenced (Ololube, 2008). With University education low in the priorities of major government issues, surge in academic standards is not surprising. However, university accreditation, licensure, and certification are being reconstructed in fundamental ways. The impact of this is the creation of an entire historical era in the professionalization of university education that will be equal in significance to other measure to ensure sustainable development.

Education and development play a crucial role. The current global higher education reform movement is leading to some interesting comparisons with the situation in Nigeria (Ololube & Ubogu, 2008; Ololube, 2008). Fundamental to this reform movement is the need to enhance managerial capability in the face of the greater responsibilities which enhanced autonomy brings with it. The meaning of autonomy, however, is a complex issue and cannot be divorced from the parallel theme of accountability (Mauch & Sabloff, 1995; Ololube, 2006a). The study of leadership and quality improvement as a vehicle for higher education reform is not a new phenomenon. If educational reform was to become effective and produce measurable results, elements of quality management need to be present in improvement efforts (Detert & Jenni, 2000). Research in the field of higher education as a public sector agency should recognize the significance of leadership and management as drivers of quality improvement. Greater academic management is tied to the transformational, developmental and visionary continuums of leadership. Research of Ogawa & Bossert, (1997), reflects on the roles of organizational leadership functions to influence or enhance the performance of organizations and their chances of survival.

An important aspect of the global reform movement especially in the public sector vis-à-vis university education is to sustain balance between greater institutional autonomy and public accountability, which is predominantly obvious in the areas of teaching and research, leadership and management. This research study fulfilled the necessitate to provide the public sector managers, planners, policy makers, and researchers that are interested in empirical information methods that might help them improve the quality of universities with a framework and guide for the assessment and planning sustainable expansion and improvement in the Nigerian university education.

The purpose of this research is to relate the findings from research studies to the situation currently facing institutional managers in the increasingly autonomous universities in Nigeria. Examples will be drawn from well-documented recent studies on the theme of reform and change in higher education and that of the Republic of Nigeria as little has yet been written about this domain of study. The enthusiasm to write this research paper was inspired by the desire to examine the effect of university leadership and management processes and the standard of its education. Standard in this circumstance is the degree of excellence essential for a particular purpose; it is a conventional or approved example against which observable fact are judged or measured (Ololube & Ubogu, 2008). The objectives of this research are made to order for the study of faculty perception of leadership style, the quality management for sustainable improvement development in Nigerian university systems, with the view to ascertain the degree to which leadership and management factors impact on faculty performances. Specifically, the study addressed four basic objectives: